Though they are worth reading as examples of a reworked Marxist approach to historical sociology, these books also address central political problems for Marxist and feminist activists today. Marxist or essentialist feminism?
From the late 70s on, a central political problem for Marxists has been the articulation of a historical materialist response to feminist identity politics. The working class has often been conceived of as salaried workers, and thus in their vast majority male. As a result, the mass and global women's movement of the 1970s was often either characterised as bourgeois or petite bourgeois in character or, more positively, as an important (but essentially unnecessary) ally, to the [male] working class revolutionary project.
Not surprisingly, most feminists rejected this second-class citizen status in the project of revolutionary transformation of society. Essentialism as the basis of identity politics became a central pole in the political spectrum of the 80s and 90s with alliances between Marxists/socialists and feminists a source of constant tension, both jockeying for the centre stage.
Seccombe's books offers a different approach to this issue. He retains a strict Marxist-historical materialist methodology of analysing the mode of production as involving three "Departments": Department One being the production of the means of production and Department Iwo the production of the goods for human consumption. But he shifts the focus for the central role of Department Three from the traditional Marxist view as the place of consumption to that of the necessary production of labour power on a daily and generational basis organised through the tamıly. The society as a whole must conti-
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Everything OK, dearesti MH!! nually find new labour power - generally through the biological reproduction of workers [women of the labouring classes having children] and provide for their appropriate training into the types of labour necessary for that society. In doing so, the role of women and the family now take their proper place as central for all those revolutionaries adhering to a class analysis of society.
This also makes a gendered class analysis a necessity for the understanding of the differential distribution of the labour force across all three Departments. The slogan from the 1970s of "No socialist revolution without women's liberation, no women's liberation without socialist revolution" flows from this linked reality. Modern capitalist family forms
Seccombe analyses family reality, including the recognition of its oppressive nature, in a way that is familiar to many feminists. One insight is the importance of Inheritance as the key mechanism by which the means of daily and generational reproduction are passed from one generation to another within the working class. With the advent of capitalism, production is no longer in the home, having been consolidated into the factories, and thus the children of the workers no longer inherit the means of production from their parents. But they do continue to inherit the means of subsistence the family home, household goods, etc. From the pots and pans, TVs and furniture for setting up the new home to the baby clothes passed on from relatives, and child care services provided by aunts and grandmothers, the family continues to subsidise the cost of the reproduction of labour power on a generational basis.
This intergenerational concern runs counter to the "snapshot" idealistic framework of most Marxist analysis. Rather than examine "the lone worker at some indefinite moment in his working life, Seccombe focuses on the production of the labour force on a daily and generational basis. he insists on taking a life span view of the working class. By analysing
Don t forget to type that report for me, dearest, the necessity for workers to produce more than what is necessary for their own upkeep for most of their working lives, as they are supporting "unproductive" children during one phase and their decreasingly productive parents during another, one can better understand the options before the working class family. It is this life-span view that makes inheritance so Fertility decline and reproductive rights
Those coming of age in 1998 may wonder why the right to abortion and contraception were at the centre of the 1970's women movement, and why this issue of reproductive rights continues to be at the centre of feminist political struggles. In Weathering the Storm, Seccombe offers a detailed historical precedent for this.
Within the context of the newly developed family form in the working class of male breadwinner and women in the home, the explanation of the fertility decline in industrial countries was based on working-class women's struggle -with their husbands- to limit family size, due to the increasing cost of child-rearing and the decreasing contribution that children could make to the family economy. He argues that this change in the family form was the basis for the reintroduction of stronger patriarchal relations between the wife and
Seccombe offers a vivid portrait of this husband-wife struggle within the marriage to introduce contraception, drawing clear parallels between the married women's relative lack of economic power and their domestic-sexual subordination, including their different attitudes toward sexuality and contraception as well as the relative "cost" of children.
By doing so Seccombe reinserts human agency into historical change and demonstrates the importance of the feminist and labour movements in changing attitudes in the late 19th and early 20th century. Then and now
Seccombe's work is an historical ac-
count of the changing family form with the transition to modern capitalism. As such, it is only suggestive about what impact the more rapid imposition of capitalism has had and will have on the multitude of family forms in the current period. What is clear is that reproductive issues will continue to be a central focus for women's struggles - both within the private family and with public policy. It is also clear that, however the form that family takes may change, the tuture or family is a concern for all workers.
This is a salutary lesson for all revolutionaries. These books deserve their attention and careful reading. Reviewed by Susan Caldwell A Millennium of Family Change: Feudalism to Capitalism in Northwestern Europe. 1992, Verso, ISBN 1-85984-0523 and Weathering the Storm: Working-Class Families from the Industrial Revolution to the Fertility Decline. 1993. Verso, 286p bibl index ISBN 1-85984064-7 hardback or ISBN 0-86091-333-3 paperback. A Millennium of Family Change has been published in Italian. The second volume should be published in Italian later this year. The author is interested in feedback on his work and can be contacted at <seccombe@interlog.com> For whom am I writing?
"It is relatively easy for the imperialist powers to win domestic public support for new bombings of Iraq, dehumanised, they are seen as violent irrational terrorists always on the lookout for murder and bombing outrages. The only Arabs worth doing business with... are compliant leaders, businessmen, military people whose arms purchases (the highest per capita in the world) are keeping the American economy afloat. Beyond that there is no feeling at all, for instance, for the dreadful suffering of the Iraqi people whose identity and existence have simply been lost sight of in the present situation."
Al-Hayat and Al Ahram Weekly
Egyptian writer and activist Nawal El Saadawi is one of the few Arab intellectuals to have penetrated through the smoke screens and prejudice of Western academia. This timely compilation of her non-fiction writing since the publication of her seminal book on Arab women, The hidden face of Eve (Zed, 1980) presents the full range of her extraordinary work.
She explores a range of topics, from women's oppression at the hands of recent interpretations of Islam to the role of women in African literature, from the sexual politics of development identity, to the subversive potential of creativity, to the fight against female genital mutilation.
Removed from her post as Egypt's director of Public Health and imprisoned under Sadat for her political activities, she has been a constant thorn in the side of the class and patriarchal systems of the Arab world. And, during her four-year selfimposed exile at an American University, she experienced the marginalisation of third world and particularly Arab thinkers so eloquently described by Edward Said.
This volume also includes her outsiders view of the British women's movement, with all its excruciating idiosyncrasies. At one point she quotes from this magazine, but we escape inclusion in her impassioned critique of the inconsistencies of Northern liberals and many radicals.
"When I, as an Arab woman, say what I think about what is happening in my region, I am made to disappear, or portrayed as an Arab terrorist thirsty for blood [but] if I say something with which my interviewer agrees, I am called a peacemaker or a post-modern thinker. Never am I allowed to be myself and yet an Arab woman." [JD] The Nawal El Saadawi reader, Zed Books, 1997. ISBN 1 85649 514 0 (Pbk) Selling sex
"Money can save our lives, never mind
Other books on the sex industry have asked why men buy sex, how much they buy, and how the sex economy is organised. The traffic in women explores the perceptions and experiences of the women involved. It is the result of extensive interviews by The Foundation for Women, a Thai non-governmental organisation, which has pioneered resistance to the sex
The traffic in women tells us about women's experiences as migrant workers, prostitutes, and as second class citizens in a male-dominated society. The book doesn't deny the reality of violent exploitation, and poverty, but nor does it portray women as the powerless victims of these forces in a patriarchal society.
Trafficking is seen not as an isolated action, but as a process whereby women, subject to force and deception, are coerced into a position in which they believe they
The authors also considers how women can be empowered to end this traffic. They report on the - mixed -results of their public information programme in Thai villages where young women are recruited, and the complicated dynamics of winning community support, without shaming the families and the
NGO projects to provide alternative work for young women have met with little success. And, because remittances from daughters working as prostitutes are typically spent on house improvements and major consumer goods like refrigerators, few of the women who return to the village have enough capital to start a reviews * business or change career.
"By the time the project was concluded in Na Thong, women were still leaving for work abroad, but... they were now applying to travel legally... The destination was more likely to be Taiwan than Japan. The women most immediately involved with the project gained confidence from working with others, and wee more ready to contact agencies for assistance.
This book doesn't provide simple answers, but a large number of small suggestions for human rights activists, feminists, migrant counsellors and academics on how to raise awareness of the traffic in women, improve the chances of the women caught up in it, and eventually stop it. [JD] Siriporn Skrobanek, Nataya Boonpakdi & Chutima Janthakeero, The traffic in human realities of the international sex trade, Zed, 1997, £11.95/$17.50. ISBN 1 85649 528 0 (Pbk) Too many (poor) babies
Many feminists and environmentalists share the mainstream view that over-population is one of the root causes of global crisis. Women, population and global crisis provides a much-needed critique of common wisdom on population. It gives a historical overview of the population question, and places the population-povertyenvironment-security debate within a broad theoretical perspective.
After criticising conventional ideologies of population control - from Malthu-sianism to the birth control movements in India and China, the author shows how population control acts as another dimension of our essentially hierarchical world order.
The author tries to synthesise elements of third world, feminist, socialist and ecological thinking in her critique of population control ideologies and policies. She shows how activists in the North and south can work to separate reproductive rights from population control, and seek "efforts that place human and planetary reproduc tion above economic production." [JD] Askoka Bandarage, Women, population and global crisis, Zed, 1997, ISBN 1 85649 428 4 (Pbk) To order the books and magazines mentioned in International Viewpoint, try your nearest progressive bookstore, or write to La Brèche, 9 rue de Tunis, 75011 Paris, France © (+33 1) 43676357 fax 43792961 (English, French and Spanish spoken). Where no price is given, we suggest you enclose US$ 10 in any convertible currency to cover the postage costs of the publisher. To announce your publication in this free listing, send a sample copy to "Book reviews" c/o International Viewpoint, PECI, BP 85, 75522 Paris cedex 11, France.
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well read